Kai Wright Presents Blindspot Episode 5: What If I Could Have Grown Old With My Brother?

Notes from America with Kai Wright

WNYC Studios

News Commentary, Politics, History, News

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 15 March 2024

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1985, doctors at a methadone clinic in the South Bronx made the harrowing discovery: 50 percent of their patients had HIV. Three years later, in the same neighborhood, a pair of epidemiologists estimated that as many as one in five young men were positive for the disease. Those numbers made the South Bronx one of most critical hotspots for HIV in the country.

Joyce Rivera was born and raised in the South Bronx. She watched as heroin flooded into her neighborhood followed by HIV. When Rivera’s brother died in 1987, she decided to do something. Working with a heroin dealer and a local priest, she defied the law and set up an illegal needle exchange in an attempt to prevent the transmission of HIV among injection drug users. And she largely succeeded. But what if this country had treated drug addiction like a public health issue instead of a criminal problem?

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Blindspot is a co-production of The HISTORY® Channel and WNYC Studios, in collaboration with The Nation Magazine.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody it's
0:06.1	it's kai back with another episode of Blind Spot the Plague in the Shadows.
0:10.8	It's a podcast series I co-reported with my friend and colleague Lizzy Ratner at the
0:15.8	nation and it tells stories from the early days of HIV and AIDS in America. Today I'd like to share the
0:22.4	penultimate episode of that series with you. It
0:25.6	explains how the war on drugs that began in the 1970s helped spread the virus widely
0:32.3	among injection drug users and those with substance helped spread the virus widely
0:32.5	among injection drug users
0:34.0	and those with substance use disorder.
0:36.6	If this reporting resonates with you,
0:38.2	check out the show notes for ways
0:40.1	to get in touch with us,
0:41.1	because we'd love to hear from you on this topic.
0:43.5	Okay, here's the episode and I hope you enjoy it. You were just saying no one has ever asked what if what were you about to say about that
1:00.3	well no one has ever asked what if there had been no HIV epidemic
1:06.8	right? No one's ever said that. Not to me anyway I've been around a long
1:11.5	enough. What if what if I could have grown old with my brother?
1:16.7	Hmm? That's something that I miss. Sometimes I'm in home and whatever something happens you know and and I want to get up and
1:25.9	call someone and I realize that my entire immediate family almost entirely is missing. What if HIV had shown up in the U.S. and we stopped it.
1:38.0	Could... HIV had shown up in the US and we stopped it.
1:44.8	Could we have stopped it?
1:49.3	Joyce Rivera is from the South Bronx,
	...

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